Post by Azurei on Feb 8, 2014 22:28:19 GMT
I was watching the budgies earlier and noticed Vic had two strange feathers poking out of the side of the base of his tail, they were twisted, and I thought maybe broken feathers or displaced as a lot of my birds are very active and mess their tails up, but anyway I caught him up to take a look and it was obvious they weren't normal feathers so I removed them, and they were stuck together! it seems they grew from the same follicle and the sides of the feather shafts mold perfectly with each other. I nearly had a heart attack thinking some disease is striking my flock (I always panic about the major diseases). Has anyone seen this before? maybe as a one off, or a follicle problem, or.....gulp......the start of something much worse? These are the outermost tail feathers, of an adult cock bird who has previously had normal tail feathers, there have been no additions to the flock since this bird (except my own bred babies). The abnormal feather is fully grown and dry, no sheath or blood.
any abnormal feathers in the tail or wings has me paranoid though 
thinking back, I'm sure I've seen something similar before, but I can't remember the details, it would have been years ago when I kept pigeons or when I had my tiel, going back 15 years or so, my memory isn't that good 